This article was originally published on The VAR Guy.

The growth of cloud services is driving a massive appetite for reliable and secure connections. Current spending on cloud services and managed hosting is more than $180 billion. By 2018, IDC FutureScape predicts at least half of IT spending will be cloud based. VARs and MSPs that are watching their traditional hardware-based margins shrink should consider that by selling cloud connectivity solutions, they are replacing lost revenue or even creating a net add.